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UNITED STATES
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
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FOR RELEASE AFTER 9 A.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 1975
EPA CONSIDERS LEGISLATION TO EXPAND WATER PLANNING PROGRAM TO
OTHER AREAS
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Russell E.
Train today announced that EPA "is seriously exploring the
possibility of draft legislation that would expand the Section
20 8 (areawide water pollution control planning) program to in-
clude air and solid waste.
The Section 208 planning program refers to a planning pro-
cess established under the Federal Water Pollution Control Act
of 1972.
Addressing the National Association of Regional Councils
in Boston, Train said, "The 208 planning process offers some
intriguing possibilities. It is areawide and includes all
aspects of water pollution control. It is a national program,
but is put together and carried out by local authorities acting
on a regional basis. It involves not only planning, but imple-
mentation. It has a high degree of public involvement and
accountability, and it ties the planning and the political pro-
cesses together.
"It is still far too early to tell if 208 will, in fact,
prove to be as effective an approach as it promises. But as
my brief description suggests, it does have the basic ingre-
dients of an effective areawide intergovernmental approach not
only to water pollution, but to air pollution and solid waste
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as well. We are, in fact, seriously exploring the possibility
of draft legislation that would expand the 208 program to in-
clude air and solid waste.
"It may well be that the 208 process, or something like
it, can help move us toward the point at which wastewater treat-
ment plans, air quality maintenance plans, transportation control
plans and the like are integral parts of more comprehensive
land use and growth management plans for localities, for regions,
and for States. These plans, moreover, would be created and
carried out through a political process in which both citizens
and their elected officials — not experts or appointed officials —
make all the basic choices and decisions."
"Since I first joined EPA over a year and a half ago,"
Train said, "I have stressed as strongly as I can my view that —
in carrying out the provisions of the Clean Air Act and other
legislation -- the Agency must do a far better job of working
with the citizens of this country, primarily through their
elected officials at the State and local levels, not simply
after the fact, but in the very formulation of our regulations,
guidelines and plans. I have, again and again, emphasized the
fact that, before we put together and publish regulations,
before we step in and start telling people where they can or
can't build, or where they can or can't drive, we must — from
the very first — make them a full partner in the process by
which those decisions are made.
"I would go even farther than that and say that our job,-
as a Federal agency, is to make sure that, in fact, there does
exist a process by which they themselves can and will make
those decisions. In other words, when we are talking about
transportation control plans, and indirect source reviews, and
other programs that have very real social, economic and other
impacts at the local and regional level, EPA1s role -- as a
Federal agency -- must be to do everything within its power to
see to it that there is, at the State, local and regional
levels, an effective, open and equitable process for confront-
ing these questions, a process that not only allows but insists upon
full public discussion and decision on the issues and alternatives
involved.
want, to the fullest extent possible, to get EPA out of
the business of putting together and, in effect, mandating
detailed transportation plans for cities across the country,
and of having to review every single major new shopping or con-
vention center in the country. I want to get the localities,
acting on a regional basis, into the business of really facing
up to these issues."
US EPA
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